The week following Halloween got away from me. I did what turned out to be an enormous, all-night Halloween party as a public shoot in NYC . You can see the images in the gallery section of of Tsirkus.org . The post-processing of forty-three images in the span of a week ate most of my time, but timeliness, especially with something like this is crucial. Although not directly coupled to this project, there is always indirect value added by doing related work. In this case it was figuring out how to handle large numbers of images (I definitely need a better/faster scanner and computer arrangement). Additionally, I think the overall photography and technique took a significant jump forward on this shoot, giving me even more ideas.
Not to justify idleness, but even in a supposed "down time" from the project, there is a large amount of cogitation going on, especially with a project as vast and involved as this. I'm thinking at this point that I do still want to magic lantern plates but to also do additional photography (such as in the streets) that would overlay the images as they are projected and these would be 35mm glass mounted slides that are cheaper to make and easier to project. The visual combining/subtraction, connections and juxtapositions will act as metaphor for the neighborhood as an evolving structure of parallels and intersections. Ideas that I try out and those that arrive through serendipity will be part of the experimental structure. Kodak carousel projectors are very cheap right now and it could be perhaps four to eight projectors orchestrated together, maybe even "played" in a sense and combined with some projected video and music/sound track.
In terms of gathering more material to work with, I'm still leaning toward one or two large public shoots. Essentially, these would be orchestrated as an event, a party, for the neighborhood, where the "admission price" is to bring a story or something that connects the person to their family history and the history of the neighborhood. Food is essential! Apparently a big draw at Stiffel is that they feed people. I also like the idea of food as cross/cultural sharing.
This Thursday and Friday, Tom Carroll interviewed people at Stiffel and I videotaped them. A picture of the neighborhood as it was in previous years really started to emerge in a very real, human way. Four people recounted their life histories, most exceeding the half hour we had allotted for each interview. A number of common threads seemed to emerge:
1. The area in some ways was like an old world "shtetl;" most people lived, worked, worshiped, and played within a fairly small boundary, only occasionally making special trips outside that perimeter.
2. Those who stayed were content and didn't see the need to move away.
3. Most people were poor but making a go of it. Children were not pressured to work.
4. Various ethnic groups generally lived on separate blocks; although there was some ethnic but no racial intermixing of housing. African-American children might visit a white neighborhood where they had schoolmates, but apparently not the reverse.
5. Generally, the various groups got along although occasionally there were instances of kids beating up other kids and words exchanged.
6. Row-house synagogues abounded (often "landsman" from a particular region would band together) and apparently pool was a big community entertainment with a number of pool halls operating in the neighborhood.
7. Baseball and its street variants were very popular.
8. Although parents knew Yiddish, they talked to their children in English. Still, the children apparently did pick up the language, at least minimally.
9. Interviewees mentioned attendeding Hebrew School, but none Yiddish day school, such as those run by the Arbeter Ring.
10. Brick and mortar establishments were predominantly Jewish, with African-Americans not owning any.
I've always kind of known this, but being steeped in Yiddish through my work at Penn, I always hoped I would find out otherwise, but people gave up their yidishkayt (Yiddishkeit) very quickly as is evidenced by the three Jewish men we interviewed. Baseball became more important than reading Peretz, Sholem Aleichem or studying the Talmud. Bennie Goodman, Artie Shaw, Jimmy Lunceford, et. al were more important than singing folk tunes from the old country and if music was made at home, it was more likely to be an American standard than anything else. However, some attachments don't die. When, I believe Nathan Pepper was asked about why it was important to not let the Emily St. ("Little") Shul close he said, and I paraphrase: "It would be wrong, a waste, a sin."
Stories/Images:
1. A 90lb boy, working for a grocer having to haul one hundred pound sacks of flour from one store to another using a wheelbarrow. He wheeled the sack to the recipient store, perhaps ten blocks away, and the owner demanded that he bring the sack of flour inside. He refused. His boss fired him.
2. Mrs Rubinstein, the the "Nut Lady," who supposedly weighed 500 lbs, could barely get around and had a business on Seventh Street selling all kinds of nuts, including roasted "Polly" (sunflower--most likely since pet birds "Pollies" ate them too) seeds.
3. People would buy a bag of seeds for 25 or 50 cents and eat them on the front steps, letting the shells litter the street.
4. The immigrant Italian grandfather, a baker, who was too poor to afford shoes and used burlap bags as boots.
5. A Jewish boy leaving the Toyre Talmud and being set upon by a band of neighborhood toughs, grabbing a burning branch (probably from a burning trash barrel) and fending them off.
6. Working in a factory making Jack-in-the-boxes, operating a stamping machine and getting a hand caught in the works.
7. Toiling for a $1 a day at a pushcart on seventh street. "It was so cold we couldn't speak."
(Not on video, told to me during a lunch at Stiffel.)
On the historical research front, my friend Sandy Lehan, who does house histories has turned up some information on the four locations in the neighborhood, nothing earth-shaking but it does show a fair amount of turn-over, also women holding land title and many sheriff sales, The sheriff auctions are not surprising given the poor and risky character of an emerging neighborhood. Also, I remember finding out when I worked for HSP, evidence that loan associations were predatory, even to their supposed "own." A quick way to turn a dollar (especially when interest rates were very low) was to issue a loan to a marginal customer and then foreclose a year or so down the line, keeping the paid-in equity, and then buying back the property to re-sell, yet again. This was corroborated by my boss at Penn, an 80 year-old ex-real estate lawyer.
This coming week we will be looking at ward maps of area and seeing if we can get census data (hopefully it has been culled already) to get a picture fo the neighborhood demographics from approximately 1890 to 2000. We are also going to take a stab at finding out where the row-house shuls were since it appears they would have been tax-exempt properties.
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